New book - 'The Five' by Hallie Robenhold.

[Ginger]

And, that wasn't a very nice thing to have said, for which I apologize, if any were offended.

[ChrisGeorge]

Hi all

Taking time out from planning RipperCon 2020 in Baltimore Friday, April 24 to Monday, April 27. Don't miss on our Jack the Ripper - True Crime conference!

I've just started my consideration of Ms Rubenhold's book The Five: The Lives of Jack the Ripper's Women (Rubenhold, February 2019).

I come to the book and the author's approach to the victims with an open mind, even though I am a "Ripperologist."

I should hope we scholars of the case could engage with author Hallie Rubenhold in a reasonable dialogue.

Dipping my big toe in the current I note some disquieting statements by the author on Twitter written within the last day:


Hallie Rubenhold @HallieRubenhold 6 hours ago

Latest twist in the Ripperology hate-narrative: I disrespect addicts and blame them for their own illness.


Hallie Rubenhold @HallieRubenhold 6 hours ago

Which is especially painful since someone very close to me has suffered with addiction issues.


Hallie Rubenhold @HallieRubenhold 6 hours ago

This is the thing about deciding to hate people you don't know - you don't know them, so whatever assumptions you're drawing are based on guess work & your own prejudices. It takes a lot of hubris to attack someone personally when you haven't the faintest clue who they are.

[ChrisGeorge]

Relationship doesn't appear to be mendable. Hopefully she will rethink her mudslinging.


Haille Rubenhold @Hallie Rubenhold May 20

A friend of mine writing a piece about Ripperology's response to The Five has sent me something he scavenged from the dung heap of their forums. Remember, these people love and respect the victims and would never blame them for their own deaths.

[Sam Flynn]

Relationship doesn't appear to be mendable. Hopefully she will rethink her mudslinging.

Haille Rubenhold @Hallie Rubenhold May 20

A friend of mine writing a piece about Ripperology's response to The Five has sent me something he scavenged from the dung heap of their forums. Remember, these people love and respect the victims and would never blame them for their own deaths.

I don't know about "scavenging from the dung heap", but that's more like "retrieving the needle from the haystack". In the hundreds, perhaps thousands of comments referring to Rubehnhold and her book, her "friend" managed to zoom in on one like this. How desperate is that? One wonders how balanced her friend's piece about ripperology is going to be.

[PaulB]

I don't know about "scavenging from the dung heap", but that's more like "retrieving the needle from the haystack". In the hundreds, perhaps thousands of comments referring to Rubehnhold and her book, her "friend" managed to zoom in on one like this. How desperate is that? One wonders how balanced her friend's piece about ripperology is going to be.

Not that it makes any difference, but that comment about a 'thicker skin' was written by a woman.

Also, as Howard Brown has pointed out (thanks, Howard), the post read, 'In all the years I have chosen to hang around the ripper related message boards, and despite the various individuals I have managed to rub up the wrong way, I have never felt any personal hatred or hostility towards me, either as a co-author of a book on the hated Maybrick diary, or as a female, and the vast majority of my fellow posters have been welcoming and tolerant of views I have expressed, no matter how far removed they may be from their own.'

I wonder if the "friend" will mention that?

[ChrisGeorge]

Not that it makes any difference, but that comment about a 'thicker skin' was written by a woman.

Also, as Howard Brown has pointed out (thanks, Howard), the post read, 'In all the years I have chosen to hang around the ripper related message boards, and despite the various individuals I have managed to rub up the wrong way, I have never felt any personal hatred or hostility towards me, either as a co-author of a book on the hated Maybrick diary, or as a female, and the vast majority of my fellow posters have been welcoming and tolerant of views I have expressed, no matter how far removed they may be from their own.'

I wonder if the "friend" will mention that?

I have a feeling that the intent is to insulate Ms. Rubenhold from the Hounds of Ripperology in case we drag her onto the "dung heap" of our forums.

Cheers

Chris

[ChrisGeorge]

Hi all

I see reviews calling Ms. Rubenhold a historian. Is she? She deals with history, but it appears to me that her intent is to romanticize the subjects of her books. Look at the covers of her other books.

I believe that might be the downfall of her approach to the subject.

As my friend Paul Begg wrote in his review of The Five in Ripperologist 164, she is very selective in the way that she handles evidence and purposely doesn't include information that doesn't support her thesis.

In essence, then, she is portraying the five victims as she wants to see them rather than as they actually were.

Best regards

Chris

[Cogidubnus]

Not that it makes any difference, but that comment about a 'thicker skin' was written by a woman.

Also, as Howard Brown has pointed out (thanks, Howard), the post read, 'In all the years I have chosen to hang around the ripper related message boards, and despite the various individuals I have managed to rub up the wrong way, I have never felt any personal hatred or hostility towards me, either as a co-author of a book on the hated Maybrick diary, or as a female, and the vast majority of my fellow posters have been welcoming and tolerant of views I have expressed, no matter how far removed they may be from their own.'

I wonder if the "friend" will mention that?

"This is the thing about deciding to hate people you don't know - you don't know them, so whatever assumptions you're drawing are based on guess work & your own prejudices. It takes a lot of hubris to attack someone personally when you haven't the faintest clue who they are."

[Herlock Sholmes]

Latest twist in the Ripperology hate-narrative

This kind of language points to a woman who was hoping to create her own little ‘Ripperological Safe Space’ where she could assume her self-appointed role as the valiant hero defending the honour of the victims of Jack the Ripper against a hated army of Ripperologists walking around in “I love Jack the Ripper” t-shirts. Now she herself is a ‘victim’ of being found out. Did she arrogantly assume that no one would check her research? Or did she think that she was somehow exempt? From the beginning she appeared as a person with an agenda and so it has been proved. An agenda which overrode any thought of integrity. Everything she says or write needs to be rebutted...with facts.

[Robert]

"I have a feeling that the intent is to insulate Ms. Rubenhold from the Hounds of Ripperology in case we drag her onto the "dung heap" of our forums."

She's already dragged herself on, Chris. She joined JTR Forums as Hallie McGrath (her married name) on Dec 13th 2016 and is still, to date, a member of the 'dung heap.'

[ChrisGeorge]

"I have a feeling that the intent is to insulate Ms. Rubenhold from the Hounds of Ripperology in case we drag her onto the "dung heap" of our forums."

She's already dragged herself on, Chris. She joined JTR Forums as Hallie McGrath (her married name) on Dec 13th 2016 and is still, to date, a member of the 'dung heap.'

Then we don't have to wonder what she's "dung" at JtR Forums. She's one of us!

Cheers

Chris

[MrBarnett]

"I have a feeling that the intent is to insulate Ms. Rubenhold from the Hounds of Ripperology in case we drag her onto the "dung heap" of our forums."

She's already dragged herself on, Chris. She joined JTR Forums as Hallie McGrath (her married name) on Dec 13th 2016 and is still, to date, a member of the 'dung heap.'

I believe she may also be on here as ‘Madame Detective’?

And anyone who has glanced at the bibliography in her book will be able to see how much she is indebted to the ‘dung-shovelers’.

[ChrisGeorge]

She maybe here as Mistress H. Abberline and Hailie Poirot too.

[Herlock Sholmes]

I haven’t read the book as I’m waiting a few weeks for it to appear in The Works for £3! Who does she mention in her acknowledgments (apart from Joseph Goebbels of course?)

[ChrisGeorge]

Hi Herlock

I understand that despite Ms Rubenhold's criticism of Ripperologists on her Twitter account, the book does reference a number of the sources one would expect, such as Begg, Rumbelow, etc.

Cheers

Chris